For many commercial facilities it is a requirement to monitor presence, particularly for the benefit of the emergency services in the event of fire or other emergency. Often this is achieved by “signing in” either physically in a visitor's book or by way of a dedicated key card or the like. Unlike commercial facilities, residents of multiple occupancy buildings are not usually asked to sign in on entry and there is no direct monitoring of presence. As a consequence, emergency services need to estimate presence based on plans of the building and/or other indirect information. Obviously, this can lead to considerable inaccuracy in presence estimates. Consequently emergency services personnel and/or residents of the building may face an unnecessarily increased risk of harm during an emergency.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a system (and method) for presence monitoring that at least partially overcomes or alleviates the above problems.